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ROBERT E. LEE. 




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PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 
1890. 



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Copyright, 1890, by J. B. Lippincott Company. 



■illl'sTERE0 TYFEr -'s A:.DPRINTERs1l> - 
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BOBERT E. LEE. 



Lee, Robert Edward, was fifth in descent from 
Richard Lee of Shropshire, England, who emigrated 
to Virginia in the reign of Charles I. The ancestor 
of the Lee family in Virginia received large grants 
of land located between the Potomac and Rappahan- 
nock rivers, known as the Northern Neck, and here 
he built the original Stratford House, which was 
burned some years after. In the later edifice, erected 
by his grandson, Thomas Lee of Stratford, were born 
the distinguished brothers, Richard Henry Lee 
(1732-94), mover of the resolution in favour of 
American Independence and a signer of the Decla- 
ration ; Francis Lightfoot Lee (1734-97), a signer of 
the Declaration; and William (1737-95) and Arthur 
Lee (1740-92), diplomatists. There also, on 19th 
January 1807, was born the subject of this sketch, 
the son of General Henry Lee, a cousin of the pre- 
ceding. At the age of eleven he lost his father, and 
at eighteen he entered the Military Academy at West 
Point. He graduated second in his class in 1829, 
and received a second-lieutenant's commission in the 
engineers. In 1832 he married Mary Custis, daugh- 
ter of George Washington Parke Custis, adopted son 



4 ROBERT E. LEE. 

of George Washington, and grandson of his wife by 
her first marriage. He became first-lieutenant in 
1836, and captain in 1838. At the beginning of the 
Mexican war in 1846 he was appointed chief-engineer 
of the central army in Mexico. General Winfield 
Scott praised him highly in official reports for his 
services at the siege of Vera Cruz. At the storming 
of Chapultepec he was severely wounded, and for 
meritorious services received his third brevet pro- 
motion in rank. In 1852 Colonel Lee was in com- 
mand of the United States Military Academy, and in 
the three years of his administration greatly im- 
proved its efficiency as a training school for officers. 
His next service was as an officer of cavalry on the 
Texan border in 1855-59. When on a furlough in 
October 1859, the time of the John Brown raid, he 
was put in command of a small force and ordered to 
Harper's Ferry to capture the insurgents. Colonel 
Lee was in command of the department of Texas in 
i860, but was recalled to Washington early in 1861 
when the ' irrepressible conflict' between the free 
and the slave states seemed imminent. When Lee 
reached the capital in March 186 1, seven states had 
passed ordinances of secession from the Union, and 
had formed the Southern Confederacy. Virginia se- 
ceded from the Union on April 17, and Colonel Lee, 
believing that his supreme political allegiance was 
due to his state rather than to the Union, felt com- 
pelled to send his resignation to General Scott, which 
he did on the 20th of April. The bitter struggle be- 
tween his personal preferences and his high sense of 
duty is shown in the words of his wife, written to a 



ROBERT E. LEE. 



5 



friend at the time. ' My husband has wept tears of 
blood over this terrible war; but he must as a man 
and a Virginian share the destiny of his state, which 
has solemnly pronounced for independence.' Within 
two days after his resignation from the United States 
army he was made commander-in-chief of the mili- 
tary and naval forces of Virginia. 

General Lee was devoutly religious, and a life-long 
member of the Protestant Episcopal Church. His 
purpose to draw his sword only in defence of his 
native state was modified by its joining the South- 
ern Confederacy, and the change of the capital 
from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia. 
When the Confederate Congress met in Richmond, 
with representatives from eleven states, in May 1861, 
five brigadier-generals were appointed, of whom Lee 
ranked third. He had at first no active command, 
but remained at Richmond to superintend the de- 
fences of the city till the autumn, when he was sent 
to oppose General Rosecrans in West Virginia. In 
the spring of 1862 he was sent to supervise the coast 
defences of Georgia and South Carolina; but when 
McClellan's ' on to Richmond' advance with 100,000 
men was assured, Lee was summoned to the capital. 
General Joseph E. Johnston, chief in command, was 
disabled by a wound at the battle of Seven Pines, 
May 31, 1862, and Lee was put in command of the 
army around Richmond. The masterly strategy dis- 
played by Lee, and the desperate fighting of his army 
in the famous seven days' battles around Richmond, 
defeated the purposes of McClellan's Peninsular cam- 
paign, and belong rather to the history of the war 



6 ROBERT E. LEE. 

than to personal biography. The same may be said 
of his battles and strategy in opposing General Pope's 
movements, his invasion of Maryland and Pennsyl- 
vania, and other prominent events of the war. The 
increasing resources of the North and the decreasing 
resources of the South could only result in the final 
success of the former. It was no news to Lee to be 
told of ' the hopelessness of further resistance' by 
General Grant in his note of April 7, 1865, and the 
common desire of both commanders * to avoid useless 
effusion of blood' was creditable to both. On April 
9, 1865, Lee surrendered his army of about 26,000 
men to General Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, 
Virginia, and the four years' war was practically 
ended. That General Lee undertook ill-judged move- 
ments, as his advance into Pennsylvania, and that he 
trusted too much to his lieutenants in matters of im- 
portance, has been the opinion of some critics ; and 
probably his unwillingness to throw blame on govern- 
ment officials who planned, and on subordinates to 
whom he entrusted the execution of the plans or parts 
of them, has given more apparent than deserved 
grounds for such criticisms. After the close of the 
war he frankly accepted the result, and although de- 
prived of his former property at Arlington on the 
Potomac, and the White House on the Pamunky, he 
declined proffered offers of pecuniary aid, and ac- 
cepted the presidency of Washington College, since 
called the Washington and Lee University, at Lex- 
ington, Virginia. Here he devoted himself assidu- 
ously to the proper duties of a college president, gain- 
ing the affectionate esteem of the faculty and students 



ROBERT E. LEE. y 

as he had of the officers and soldiers of two armies 
in former years. 

Exposure in the field in 1863 had resulted in rheu- 
matic inflammation of the pericardium, which became 
more painful and frequent from exposure to cold or 
violent exercise, till a severe attack in 1869 greatly 
impaired his heart's action. From a second attack, 
in September 1870, he did not recover, but grew 
weaker till his death, October 12, 1870. His widow 
died in Lexington, Virginia, November 6, 1873. Gen- 
eral Lee had three sons and four daughters. The 
eldest son, George Washington Custis Lee, gradu- 
ated at the head of his class at West Point in 1854, 
resigned as first-lieutenant in the United States army 
in 1 86 1, was an aide-de-camp to Jefferson Davis, 
1861-63, major-general of a division of the army of 
northern Virginia in 1864, and successor of his father 
as president of the Washington and Lee University 
in 1871. William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, the second 
son, was an officer in the United States army, and 
major-general of cavalry in the Confederate army. 
He was elected to the 50th and 5 1 st congresses. Cap- 
tain Robert E. Lee of the Confederate cavalry was 
the third son. 

A bronze equestrian statue of General Lee, by 
Mercie of Paris, erected mainly by the women of the 
South, was unveiled in Richmond, Virginia, in 1 890. 
The height of the whole structure, including an elabo- 
rate monumental pedestal, is 61 feet 2 inches, the 
equestrian figure being 22 feet 2 inches. See the 
Life by John Esten Cooke (1871), and Gen. A. L. 
Long, Memoirs of Robert E, Lee (1887). 



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